


If The Fates Allow

by KMDWriterGrl



Category: Profiler
Genre: F/M, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/KMDWriterGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of Danny’s death, Rachel has a hard time dealing with the holidays. But John has a few tricks up his sleeve to make the holidays bright. Team friendship as well as Rachel/John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If The Fates Allow

_“Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Make the Yuletide gay. From now on our troubles will be far away. Through the years we’ll always be together if the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”_

 

RACHEL:

I woke up screaming, something I thought only happened in the movies.

 

 It took me about three seconds to realize that I was awake, another two to realize I’d screamed, and another five after that to notice that I’d automatically drawn my gun and was about to take out my flat screen TV with a well placed bullet. Only then did it register that I wasn’t alone in my bed and that the person next to me wasn’t Joel Marks, as I’d been dreaming.

 

“Easy.” John’s hand came up to cover mine on the barrel of the gun. “I’d kind of like to watch that if we can’t get back to sleep.” He nodded at the TV and then eyed the gun. “Thank God you didn’t get the safety off.” He loosened my fingers and slid the gun back into the gun safe. “Bad dream?”

 

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Every time I woke up it hit me all over again—Danny, the paramedics, the scene at the top of the warehouse on Harbor Street when Bailey and John showed me Danny’s body covered in a sheet.

 

John knew what I couldn’t say. Sometime in the last six months, between losing Kate and losing Danny, we’d come to understand each other in a way that never would have been possible had our lives gone on as they always had. Somehow, in the act of losing people we loved, we ended up finding peace with each other.

 

“Marks again?”

 

“Yeah.” My mouth was dry. My eyes, on the other hand, were threatening to spill over.

 

“Here.” He passed me a bottle of water that was sitting on the nightstand on what has become his side of the bed.

 

“Thanks.” I swallowed hard, trying to get everything under control—my tears, my emotions, my racing heart, my churning stomach. “You didn’t have to stay.”

 

“I know.” His hand came up to rest on my back. His palm was warm—I could feel it through my shirt. “But I think it’s time you stopped waking up alone, don’t you?”

 

The tears welled again. Fuck. Where was my control? It had disappeared into thin air. I felt as brittle and fragile as glass with a crack spider webbing through it—any more pressure and I was going to break.

 

His hand moved to the back of my neck, his fingers kneading the tension out. “I’m right here,” he whispered. I felt his lips on my temple and I closed my eyes, sinking against him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

 

***

JOHN:

There were hot tears leaking into my shirt. Rachel shuddered, wrapped an arm around my waist, and buried her face tighter against me. She doesn’t make sounds as she cries—something, she told me once, she’d learned to do as a kid so as not to attract the derision of her older brothers after they’d gotten too rough during a game of soccer or hockey.

 

A few months ago the crying would have freaked me out, sent me heading for the door with an excuse about needing to get home. I don’t deal well with crying women—not at work, not in my personal life. But since Kate died I’ve done more than my share of crying and learned a lot about how comforting it can be to have someone there in the middle of all the grief. The idea of leaving Rachel alone when she was this shaken, this grief-stricken, was unthinkable.

 

“Why don’t you try to get some more rest?” I rubbed the back of her neck, moved my fingers up to stroke her hair, trying to navigate the wide playing field between a touch that comforts and a touch that’s sexual and hoping that she understood that I was just trying to make her feel better.

 

That’s another thing that’s changed—ask the old John what a massage was good for and I’d have said a prelude to a seduction. But that was before first Kate and then Rachel taught me that touch can be friendly, supportive, even loving, without necessarily being romantic. Kind of a weird revelation for the self-professed womanizer, I know, but hey, we’ve all gotta grow up some time.

 

“Too many nightmares,” Rachel responded, her voice muffled by my DOJ t-shirt. She raised her face so she could see me. Her eyes were red from crying, and her face had gotten much too thin. She spent the first few weeks after Kate died trying to get me to eat and I felt badly that I haven’t done the same for her.

 

“How about some TV?” I asked, grabbing the remote off the bedside table. “There’s probably some ridiculous Christmas special on even at this time of night.”

 

Rachel nodded and rolled off the bed. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her wash her face and tie back her hair. Even without make-up, she was one of the most striking women I’d ever seen. There was no trace of Sam’s doe-eyed vulnerability in Rachel. She was fiercely lovely, intensely beautiful, even half-destroyed by grief.

 

“I don’t even want to think about Christmas,” she said, sliding back into bed beside me and laying her head on my chest again. “My parents have all ready decided to go away this year instead of having the whole family home. They said it would be too hard without Danny.” Her voice was bitter. “Never mind how hard it’ll be on the rest of us. They’re going to Cancun.”

 

“So … what are you going to do about Christmas?”

 

Rachel shrugged tiredly. “I don’t think I want to do it, honestly. Not without my family.” Unspoken but understood-- “not without Danny.” She changed the subject quickly. “What about you? What do you do for Christmas?”

 

My turn to shrug. Christmas and I have never been very good friends. After my mom died and my dad was implicated in the “accident” that killed her, Christmas stopped being a part of my life. I was in a series of foster homes until I was 18, the kid who invariably ended up with either a few practical gifts or nothing at all, watching the biological kid get all the attention and gifts and trying not to feel bitter about it. After that, I’d work on Christmas or spend it with a girlfriend if I happened to have one. I spent one memorable year cruising a swinger’s party and doing some serious groping under the mistletoe.

 

The last three years I’d celebrated with the team. Because of Sam and Bailey’s daughters and then Grace’s son, we’d always had a tree, a small party, gifts and a meal together. But now that Frances was at college, Sam was gone, and Grace was in the midst of a custody battle with her ex-husband and his new wife, I didn’t even know if we’d have that.

 

“We should do something for Grace and her boys,” Rachel said, as if reading my mind. “She’s had a tough year.”

 

We all had, actually. I’d lost Kate, gotten tangled in a bogus moral turpitude charge, stood by and watched members of my team nearly fall apart under the strain of their own lives. Bailey had been shot (again), turned against by his Congressional girlfriend, and nearly saw his team fall to pieces. Grace’s marriage had ended and hard on the heels of that she had nearly died in childbirth. George had been dumped by his long-time boyfriend and almost lost his job to the resultant drug problem. To say that we’d had a tough year was an understatement of immense proportions.

 

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

 

“Mmm … well, a tree, of course. We could go out to one of the local tree farms, cut one, and decorate it. Then dinner …one we can all cook together. Presents for the boys. Hell, presents for us … I think we all deserve it. Watch a round of old-school Christmas specials in front of the fire.” Her eyes were getting brighter the more she talked, but happy bright, not tearful bright. “What do you think?”

 

I thought anything to cheer her up was a fantastic idea … and if it cheered up the team, too, then so much the better for the rest of us. I was about to tell her this when the light faded from her eyes and she sighed, laid her head back down on my chest, and murmured, “It’s too much work. Forget it, John.”

 

I was not going to forget it. But I certainly wasn’t about to tell her that. So I switched the channel until I came across a Doctor Who episode and we watched it together, my fingers tangled in her hair, massaging her scalp, comforting the only way she’d let me until I could come up with something—anything—better to offer.

***

RACHEL:

If I’d really been at my best, I’d have noticed that John was planning something. But since Danny died and Marks was killed on my watch, to say I’ve been off my game is an understatement.

 

After Kate died I’d started coming to John’s apartment to make him dinner. He’d decided that he needed to return to the favor—probably with a little prodding from Bailey, who’s spending too much time giving me worried looks. It’s gotten so that we spend more evenings together than apart … and more and more nights, too, though he’s always a gentleman about it, keeping to his side of the bed, never getting fresh or making a move. In fact, it’s always been me who’s moved into his personal space rather than the other way around. I don’t know if he minds it—though I assume he wouldn’t let me spend so much time with my head on his chest if he did—but I certainly don’t have a problem with it. I’m finding that I like the settled constancy of us in that way, though he’d probably bolt for the door if I ever said it to him.

 

So when he showed up at my place after work without the usual bag of groceries and handed me my coat and scarf, I started getting immediately suspicious.

 

“Are we going someplace?”

 

“Yep. Put your coat on, Red, and we’re out of here.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“It’s a surprise.”

 

“I don’t like surprises.” I lifted an eyebrow at him and waited to see if he’d say more.

 

“Tough.” He took my coat out of my hands and held it, waiting for me to slip my arms into the sleeves. “I do.”

 

“You do not!” I said, laughing. “You hate anything that isn’t planned out to the letter.”

 

“I like surprises when I plan them. And I planned this one good. And if you don’t hurry up, we’re going to be late.” He thought for a moment. “Bring gloves if you have them. And a hat.”

 

“It’s not THAT cold outside.”

 

“It is where we’re going.”

 

Which really got me wondering what John Grant had up his Armani-clothed sleeve.

*

A Christmas tree farm.

 

He took me to a _Christmas tree farm_.

 

I wanted to throttle him with my bare hands. Since giving in to that impulse would result in a fiery car crash, I refrained, but only just.

 

If there’s one thing to be said for John Grant, it’s that he’s got the market cornered in sheer, unadulterated gall. Since I’ve got a pretty good amount of that myself, we spend a lot of time butting heads. But this … oh, this takes the cake even for John.

 

We’d discussed the subject to death for the last two weeks—no Christmas. Not this year. I was boycotting and for very obvious, sincere, emotional reasons. No Christmas. It reminded me of Danny. I was avoiding the holiday the way that John avoided convenience stores because they reminded him of Kate. So where did he drag me at the first opportunity? A Christmas tree farm. To say that I was livid was to understate the case by leaps and bounds.

 

“It’s not JUST a Christmas tree farm,” John said as we drove down the bumpy road toward Yule Forest in Stockbridge. “It’s an agri-tourism center.”

 

“What the hell does that even mean?” I asked grumpily.

 

“Well, it’s not just Christmas trees. They have a pumpkin patch, they do pick your own fruits and vegetables, they have this whole outdoor classroom where teachers can bring their classes to learn about conservation. And there’s a petting zoo, a huge trampoline, a big-ass slide…” John was sounding more enthused by the minute.

 

“I’m not a kid, John, what do I want a trampoline for?” And then all the pieces snapped into place and I groaned. “Oh god, you didn’t.”

 

“Yep.” John pulled up into the parking area next to Bailey’s Lexus and Grace’s RAV 4 and gave me an infuriating grin. “I did. Come on.”

 

And there they all were. Bailey, dressed down in jeans, a sweater, a weathered black leather jacket and gloves; George, in jeans, Docs, and a Georgia Tech hoodie, holding tightly to the hand of Grace’s four-year-old, Jason; and Grace in boot cut jeans and a red turtleneck, baby George bundled up in a snuggly carrier across her chest. All of them are beaming excitedly, obviously happy as hell to be here. Damn. Damn damn damn damn damn.

 

I’d been trying to explain to John that it isn’t that I don’t like Christmas. I do, because my family does it so enormously. Trees in every room, wreaths on every window, stockings for everyone, gifts from Santa and from family, food with such psychotic caloric value that we only eat it once a year. Danny and I, more than any of the others, had always been deemed the Christmas elves. We were the ones my parents turned to when they wanted help creatively wrapping a gift for one of our other brothers or needed an idea of what to get for Aunt Caroline.

 

With Danny gone, Christmas won’t ever be the same. And the grief is still so fresh, so raw, that I don’t even want to try it. I don’t want to do what the Bureau ordered psychologist suggested, which is buck up and unselfishly jump back in for the sake of my friends and family. That’s not possible. I miss my brother, my fellow Christmas elf, with a pain so fierce that it stabs through me every day. It hurts too much to do this, even if it is for someone else.

 

But as the Bureau shrink would also, no doubt, point out, I AM being pretty damn selfish. Just because I don’t want to enjoy Christmas doesn’t mean that my friends shouldn’t. As John had pointed out a few weeks ago, we’ve all had a horrible year—world record bad all the way around. We need this kind of time together, this normalcy, this whimsy. Who the hell am I to spoil their fun just because I’m grieving?

 

So I shoot John a poisonous glare, put a half-smile on my face, and climb out of the Porsche.

 

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I deadpanned, walking up to Grace to offer her a hug. “Hi.”

 

“How mad are you?” she asked, _sotto voce_ , under the pretense of leaning forward to adjust my scarf.

 

“Oh, I’m going to kick his ass,” I replied. “But later. When we’re alone.” When Grace grinned and raised an eyebrow I realized how that sounded and sighed. “You know what I mean.”

 

“Yep. Anger sex can be hot.” A sentiment I never expected to hear out of Grace’s mouth. Ever. In a million years. When I sputtered in shock, she laughed. “Try it sometime … even if it’s not with him.”

 

“We’re not—“

 

“Yeah, sure you’re not.” She turned to George and Jason. “Let’s go find these reindeer I heard about.”

 

The happy little grouplet hurried off with Jason between George and Grace, one hand in each of theirs, leaving me with Bailey and John.

 

“Should I assign a protective detail to John?” Bailey asked, moving forward to give me a soft kiss on the cheek.

 

“Do I really look that angry?”

 

Bailey laughed. “Yes.”  


Oh. Maybe I needed to work on my facial expressions.

 

“I’m sorry.” I turned to include John in the conversation. “I know I’m acting like a bitch. This is just really hard for me.” I look around the lot at the families heading for the tree farm, at the rows of gorgeous trees just waiting to be cut down, dragged home, and put up in the living room to be decorated with a family history’s worth of ornaments. “It was his favorite holiday.”

 

Bailey slid an arm around my shoulders and hugged me close to him. “Don’t you think he’d want you to be happy?”

 

I sighed and nodded, knuckling away a tear with my gloved hand. “Yeah, I think he would.”

 

“Let’s go get a tree then,” Bailey responded, urging me forward with a hand on my back. “It’s Georgie’s first Christmas and that’s reason enough to celebrate. We’ll take it back to Grace’s and decorate it.”

 

“We’ll have a Chinese feast and watch all of the Rankin Bass Christmas specials when we’re done,” John chimed in, giving me a searching look. “Sound okay?”

 

I reached for his hand and he took it, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. That sounds okay.”


End file.
